Lost in the DEAD
by xCobaltRainx
Summary: This begins at the last page of chapter 30 of the Highschool of the Dead manga. If you have yet to read it, then be aware of spoilers. There will be Saeko x Takashi, with a possible Saya x Hirano. I'll try to be fair to Rei. Rated 'T' for Language and future reference of an..."intimate" scene, though there are no lemons. Rating may change later on.


**Thirty-One**

 **Chapter 1**

"Gunshots!?" exclaimed Tadashi Miyamoto, both worry and hope accenting his speech. The inspector ran through the school's front doors and looked up at the gloomy sky to more clearly hear from which direction the firing was coming from. "Is that Self-Defense Forces?" he asked Mrs. Yuuko Komuro whom he had heard stopping a few steps behind.

She pursed her lips. "Nope," she flatly replied with absolution. "Their weapons don't make that sound."

"Well then who are they?" he asked rhetorically.

Mrs. Komuro put her finger on her chin. "Tough to say. My guess is that it's a couple of survivors that found some weapons."

Tadashi evaluated Yuuko's assumptions. "Well if they are survivors, then what on Earth are they doing on the streets in this weather? Do you think they're fighting a herd?" Tadashi closed his eyes and listened closely to the shots being fired. The rain caused the noise to be dampened some, but he could differentiate between two distinct sounds ringing out. _Two,_ he thought to himself.

After a few minutes of listening to the gunfire and the rain, an officer approached from behind. "Captain Miyamoto," he called. The inspector turned to face the approaching man.

"Ah, Tamura, is this about that racket out there?"

Tamura nodded. "Yes sir, there's a small armed group of eight survivors heading our way, about two kilometers away. One of them appears to be a child."

Tadashi's face hardened. "What kind of weapons do they have?"

"They're in possession of three firearms: a handgun, a shotgun, and a submachine gun; and three close-range weapons: two spears, and a sword.

 _Three._ "Please tell me it's the infected they're fighting."

"Yes sir. They're holding their own against the infected, but a horde no less than three dozen is in between us and them."

The inspector cast his eyes downward and let out a sigh, one of stress and helplessness. "If they're heading our way, then they're gonna need a miracle if they want to get here," he said as he began walking back inside. "I'm going back up to observe them."

"Are we…going to help them?" asked the officer after him. Those just inside the front entrance looked to the seasoned and very, very fatigued man for an answer.

Tadashi stopped walking, the last echo from his squeaking shoes ringing out. He let his shoulders fall with another sigh before answering. He could almost feel everyone's eyes spearing him from every side, fixing him where he stood. "No," he said solemnly.

The air was quiet for the briefest of moments. There was nothing but the quiet tapping of the rain on the pavement outside to give any hint that time hadn't stopped. Tadashi waited just another moment before he took another step towards the stairs.

The squeaking of his shoes seemed to break Yuuko from her blank stare. "What do you mean 'no'?" she challenged. "Aren't we supposed to help as many people as we can here?"

"Yeah!" called out a few of the civilians.

Yuuko continued. "You were tasked with helping as many people as you can. You've said that you'd be doing this even if you hadn't been asked to. Why aren't we helping them?"

This time, a few more survivors joined in the acclamation.

The inspector furrowed his brow in frustration. His shoes squeaked again as he turned to face the few that had gathered. "I don't have a choice. It's true that if I had the chance I'd send a party out to get that group behind our walls. But I don't have that chance. We're low on ammo and eight survivors isn't a big enough number to risk losing anyone we haven't yet lost."

Tadashi waited a moment to let the words hang in the air. He didn't like the way he was talking, but with the direction the world had been going for the past few days, and likely many more to come, quite a lot more of his words will begin having that same tone. The veteran policeman looked at everyone at the same time before continuing. "I'm sorry, but I need to ensure the survival of as many people as I can. Those are, in fact, my orders."

Yuuko walked right up to Tadashi. "So that's it? Oh well!" she said mockingly as she turned her hands upward in a shrug. "'Not a big enough number'. What if your _wife and daughter_ are in that group?" She began pointing directly at his face. "You shouldn't just dismiss other survivors as a lost cause like that! Even if you fail, you could at least say you tried!"

Tadashi tensed his jaw at the defiant woman. "Yuuko, do not mistake my respect for you and your family for authority over me." Yuuko lowered her hand a bit, her face losing its determination. The inspector reached over and lowered it the rest of the way until it hung at her side. "I understand it's difficult to accept, but right now difficult decisions like this must be made. Humanity is back to its survivalist roots. There's an entire world of government and military officials above my head desperately trying to fix this mess, this new set of rules about life that we're all being forced to live by."

The inspector held his hand and began counting. With force, he raised his forefinger. "Stay with a group; don't venture too far alone." He raised another finger. "Protect everyone in that group." He raised a third. "But above all else, you must ensure your _own_ survival." He held his three fingers in the air as if they were a scepter. With care, Tadashi lowered them and placed his other hand on Yuuko's shoulder. "Again, I'm sorry, but there's nothing we can do." With that, he walked off back towards the stairs, putting a definitive end to what transpired.

Yuuko sighed as she walked outside into the downpour to listen to the sounds of the survivors. Although she didn't agree with it, she understood both his argument and his authority. This school sheltered some 300 to 400 people, and it, along with the countless other shelters across the world, definitely serves as an ark to ensure that humanity will come back. An additional eight people would only be a drop in the bucket. Still though, she hoped with whatever energy she could muster that this group makes it to safety.

::

Once Tadashi reached the roof, an officer in a blue plastic poncho handed him a pair of high power binoculars and pointed in the direction of the group. "They're doing a hell of a job cleaning them up," the officer said a bit too jovially.

The inspector stared down the young man. "This isn't a game, people's lives are at stake here."

The man scratched his ear underneath his hood. "Yes sir." He returned to the railing.

Tadashi held up the binoculars and, through the fog, spotted the battle-ground just about a kilometer and a half up the street. It truly was a _massive_ herd of infected. Of the eight survivors, there were four people in the rear and four in the front. The two in the back with the pistol and the SMG picked off the infected that the four in the front didn't yet kill, and protected the other two huddled next to them. Tadashi spotted the child that his officer mentioned standing close to an unarmed adult between the shooters. Suddenly, two more infected appeared just to their left. His heart jumped to his throat when the one using the handgun expertly dispatched them before turning back to the front. Tadashi returned his sight to the front lines. There, the one with the shotgun headed in the middle, while the sword wielder took out infected on his left. He noticed that the two survivors on the right using the spears were quite skilled. Not quite at the level of the swordsman, but skilled nonetheless. A glimmer of hope began in his chest. Though the young officer poorly chose his words, he was absolutely right. This wasn't just a band of survivors. This was a team, and they seemed to be winning.

One infected after another fell to the grace and deadliness of those two alone. He cocked his head upon realizing something about one of the spears: it wasn't one. It was a rifle with a bayonet fixed to it. _Four._ "Either he's out of ammo, or he prefers to use it as a spear," he observed quietly. There was something about the clothing worn by the one wielding the actual spear, but he just couldn't put his finger on it. Another small herd of a dozen and a half stumbled down an adjacent road and joined the massive crowd. Apparently noticing this, the survivor with the shotgun lifted his arm and called for the group to retreat. The other seven turned their heads away from Tadashi's view and started falling back, while what he could now assume to be the leader lagged behind a bit. Once he had fired a few more shots at the now massive horde, he turned to join his group.

Further up the road, the survivor using the bayonet directed the flow of the group down an alleyway. While they were turned towards the school, Tadashi strained his eyes to make out the face. A strong gust of wind blew over Tadashi and soon found the distant group. It blew the survivor's hood back, and Tadashi could see the unmistakable golden brown hair. With one last lingering stare, the survivor turned her head and joined the retreating group and disappeared from sight. It was, however, all Tadashi needed.

"Rei…" he whispered, his unlit cigarette falling from his mouth and getting ruined by the water. It was then that he realized where he had seen the uniform the spear-wielder wore. He supposed that the stress from the past week had caused his mind to become so narrow and fixed on the situation at hand that he couldn't remember what his wife's police motorcyclist uniform looked like. "Kiriko…"

Few times in Tadashi Miyamoto's life had he allowed his body to become fraught with emotion, but seeing his wife and daughter alive where there had been nothing but uncertain worry for an entire week of hell had caused his eyes to well and his throat to clench. Tadashi stared at the alleyway his family had disappeared down. He lowered his binoculars and handed them back to the officer. The rain helped in hiding his emotions by masking the tears. He looked down at the ruined cigarette and stepped on it. With one quiet, shuddering sigh, the aged police inspector returned to the stairs.

He really needed that cigarette.

::

"The only good motherfucker is a _dead_ motherfucker!" shouted Kohta Hirano, followed by a feral cackle. Saya Takagi, who stood next to him, stopped shooting for a moment.

"Have I ever told you how creepy you can get?" she asked as she resumed firing. She heard a click as the magazine emptied. Grumbling, she began fiddling with her MP5's magazine release when a few tin garbage cans crashed to the street to her left. Two zombies had emerged from behind a house. One lunged forward, garnering a cry from Saya. She screwed her eyes shut, only to hear a _pap, pap,_ then two unceremonious _thud_ s. Saya opened her eyes and looked down to find the spry zombie dead on the pavement with a fresh, steaming hole in its head. The other one had suffered the same fate as well.

"Almost as many times as I've saved your ass," Kohta confidently replied as he turned his attention back to the horde and reloaded the smoking Luger. Saya kicked the dead piece of meat on the floor in frustration as she reloaded her weapon.

"Who the hell do you think you are talking to me like that?" Saya demanded. This stupid, fat, unclean, unworthy, sack-of-crap otaku could barely ask her to pass a canteen when the air was calm and their situation free of immediate danger. However he seemed to grow a massive pair whenever he displayed his expertise in thinning a horde; so massive that, on more than one occasion, he dared speak to Saya in such as manner as this.

"Your bodyguard, remember?" he replied after eliminating another few zombies.

Saya grumbled in frustration again and continued reloading her weapon. She began thinking about how she felt when he treated her this way. She had not expected her reaction to the first time he had started ordering her around to be what it had been. She thought she would be livid, and she was, but there were more, completely unexpected feelings tossed into the mix. The pink haired regular fireball had felt calmed, reassured, and secure in the face of his upsurge of confidence. Even if they were knee deep in a mob of zombies, she would feel oddly safe; something she stopped regularly feeling after the apocalypse began.

But most of all, she felt an odd spark when she looked at him in that state. It was a small twinge in her gut that, to this moment, continued trying to tell her something, but she couldn't decipher it. Before some unknown force turned humanity on itself, Saya wouldn't have given the unkempt nerd the time of day, but now that he's shown his true colors: his deadliness and capacity for confidence, she felt drawn to him. Not romantically, at least she didn't think so, but it was still like nothing she had experienced before. She assumed it was the kind of appeal a charismatic war-hero like George Washington or Leonidas commanded. Very rarely was she given time to mull over her feelings, especially now, but what little time she had (usually no more than a few minutes before she passed out from exhaustion) she spent thinking of that spark. And Kohta Hirano's display today was nothing but more fuel for the fire. Saya Takagi _definitely_ needed some extended time to herself to think.

Saya noticed that she had been staring blankly across her gun at Kohta long enough for him to reload the 8-round pistol again. Fortunately, the gun-crazy geek hadn't noticed as he was too focused on providing cover for his friends up front. She supposed she should do the same. Pulling back the lever and releasing, she primed her weapon, took aim, and began firing.

Up in the front lines, Saeko Busujima finished lopping the heads off of three more zombies before counting the rest in the crowd. The swordswoman growled at the advancing horde. "There are too many!" she shouted. The "No more than twenty" count that Takashi Komuro had made earlier had grown considerably from the noise of the guns. Fortunately, there didn't seem to be many coming from behind. Saeko supposed they had all clustered somewhere up ahead before their group arrived.

Takashi's lips curled into a crooked grin as three more of his shotgun shells took out five more zombies. He was getting better at this. However, it wasn't enough. He did another quick count of the mob, stopping at more than thirty, before turning to his group. "Saeko's right!" he called, "We need to find another way around!" Rei and Kiriko Miyamoto finished off their own victims before falling back, after which Saeko did the same. Takashi back-stepped a few times and fired a few more shells into the crowd before running. Up ahead, Kohta and Saya continued picking off a few of Them while their comrades retreated.

"This way!" shouted Rei as she pointed down a side street. Their rescued puppy, Zeke, was already halfway down the road and barking for them to follow, signifying that the path was clear. One by one, the group quickly filed down the road. Rei stayed behind for a moment to look at the school one last time before joining her friends at the rear. The group continued running until they met nearly face-to-face with another, smaller horde. Takashi blasted a couple of the zombies that got too close, then led the way down another street to the left. Street signs and landmarks blurred together as they ran. They took several frantic turns, crossed backyards, and traversed corpse-ridden alleyways until they stopped running into mobs. Every time they had slowed down for a moment, they heard a chilling moan or a dreadful crowd of shuffling, sloshing stomping.

Eventually, Takashi realized that he had long since led his group into unknown territory. When he was younger, he had been around quite a lot of these neighborhoods, but hadn't often been to this area. The houses, aside from the usual wreckage typical of the past week, were all much nicer than the ones near his and Rei's house. They were nothing like the Takagi fortress, but they were still of a respectable variety.

"Which…*pant*…which way do we go…*pant*…now?" asked Saya through her teeth. The group had stopped at a clear four-way intersection to catch their breath. The only thing keeping both Kohta and Alice Maresato from collapsing onto the ground was the knowledge that it was very wet down there. Rei and Takashi looked up and down each street as they tried to figure out where they had ended up. Saya clenched her teeth. "God damn, what does a girl have to do to get a GPS?" she asked rhetorically through her continued panting.

"Hey wait a minute," said Takashi after a moment, "I think we're close to Yosuke Nakamura's house." He looked around and spotted his classmate's brand new red Honda in a driveway halfway down the street. _He must have made it out of the school_ , Takashi thought to himself. "Which means…" he turned around and poked his finger down one of the streets, "…this should be the way to Shintoko!"

Saya felt her eyebrow twitch. "That's the way we came, dumbass!" she yelled as she smacked him in the back of the head.

"Ow, hey!" exclaimed Takashi as he rubbed his head. "I'm sorry, I don't normally come up this way! Plus I'm not exactly wrong."

Saya reached up and smacked him again on the other side of his head. "Just shut up and think!" she commanded. Saya began trying to build a map of the area from their erratic path, but admittedly, even she couldn't perfectly recall which turns they took. She looked up at the dripping street sign on the corner. "Does anyone know what Shintoko Elementary's address is?" she asked mostly Takashi, but was met with shakes of everyone's head. She went back to staring at the street signs as if doing so would reveal to her the directions.

Aside from the rain, the air seemed eerily quiet. Just moments ago, they were surrounded by the groans and cries and the shuffling feet of the undead. Now, there was nothing; what little sound they supposed they'd normally hear was muffled by the rain. The silence of the past few minutes was broken by Alice sneezing. Shizuka Marikawa leaned down to inspect the child. "Are you okay, Sweetie? That's not a cold I hear, is it?"

"I'm fine," the girl cheerily replied.

"Dammit, we were half an hour away from the school!" shouted Takashi as he kicked a puddle. He stood with a sour grimace until a hand floated down onto his shoulder. The boy looked down to find a dark, bloodied glove. Takashi looked back to find Saeko's piercing, yet calming blue eyes looking back at him.

"Don't worry, Komuro, we'll find our way. At least we seem to be far away from Them," she said as she offered a reassuring smile.

Takashi returned the smile. "Thank you, Saeko."

"Kiriko walked to Rei's side, joining the small circle the teenagers had created in the middle of the intersection. She observed the exchange between Takashi and this purple-haired girl and noticed a slight static in the air. She thought it strange, as there had been no lightning. Kiriko put her hand on her daughters shoulder and looked her in the eye. Or at least, she tried to. The girl seemed fixated on Takashi. Kiriko wondered what it could be as she removed her hand, reached up, and began wiping the remaining blood from the blade of her husband's spear.


End file.
